How Does the Sandwich Leave Rule Affect Your Time Off in a 5-Day Workweek?

Understanding the Sandwich Leave Rule

We are an IT company and work 5 days a week, with Saturday and Sunday treated as weekly off days. My query is: if an employee takes leave from Monday to Friday and resumes duties on Monday morning, how many days of leave should be calculated? Please advise.

Regards,
Roshni B.

I am also working in an IT company, and we work for 5 days a week. In such cases, we count 5 days of absence. Weekly offs are not considered as leaves.

Thanks,
Shilpi

Understanding Sandwich Leave Rules

Generally, as a matter of practice, Casual Leave (CL) and Privilege Leave (PL) are not considered as sandwich leaves, and hence, weekly off days are excluded in these types of leaves. However, in the case of Sick Leave (SL) or Leave Without Pay (LWP), intermittent weekly off days are also considered as leaves.

In simple words, sandwich leaves refer to the leave policy where leaves are treated as continuous. For example, if an employee has taken leave on Friday and Monday, and in between, there are two weekly offs, i.e., Saturday and Sunday, then these 2 days coming in between Friday and Monday will also be counted as leaves, and the total leaves will be 4. So, in a nutshell, any weekly offs or holidays falling in between EL, CL, SL are sandwiched and to be counted as leaves in the sandwich leave policy.

Now, coming to your query, if an employee has taken leaves from Monday to Friday and resumes his duties on Monday morning where Saturday and Sunday are weekly offs, his leaves will be counted as 5 days (Mon-Fri) as per the sandwich leave policy. Here in this case, weekly offs don't come in between the leaves, and the employee has joined on Monday, so only 5 days' leave will be counted. In the same case, if the same employee has taken leave on Monday as well and has joined his duties on Tuesday, then in that case, a total of 8 leaves will be counted as per the sandwich leave policy.

I hope your doubts are clear now. Do revert in case of further information on the same.

Regards,
Ashutosh

In my view, if the leave continues to Monday, then Saturday and Sunday will be included as leave. Otherwise, if one resumes duty on Monday, then leave will be considered up to Friday only, as Saturday and Sunday are the weekly off days for your company.

Hope it is clear.

Regards,
Ramyash

Hello everyone,

We have a 5-day working week, with Saturday and Sunday as our weekly offs. Someone has applied for a one-day leave on the 27th of January (Friday) and will be returning to work on Monday. How many leaves should be considered as sandwich leave?

Considering that the 26th of January is a public holiday (Thursday), the calculation would be as follows:
- 26th Jan (Thursday, Public Holiday)
- 27th Jan (Friday, 1 day leave applied)
- Weekend (Saturday/Sunday, Weekly off)

Therefore, the total number of sandwich leaves to be considered in this scenario is 1.